Credit Market Disequilibrium in Poland: Can We Find What We Expect? Non-Stationarity and the 'Min' Condition

Abstract

This paper presents an empirical investigation of the disequilibrium hypothesis on the Polish loan market in the 1990s. Using data over this period of deep transition, we estimate a disequilibrium model with a standard maximum likelihood method. However, the estimates are highly counter-intuitive as regards the timing of the identified regimes. We show that the gap between the econometric evidence and the expected results may stem from the issue of stochastic non-stationarity in a disequilibrium setting based on the min condition. We find that the omission of one non-stationary variable of the cointegrating space or the absence of a cointegrating relationship in one or both regimes lead to a spurious configuration. In such a case, using, wrongly, the standard likelihood function, derived under the hypothesis of stationarity, may lead to non-convergent estimates of structural parameters and, as a consequence, to a fallacious regimes identification. Therefore, as the first approach to this issue, we estimate a disequilibrium model with stationary data. The empirical results are then robust and economically founded and correspond to the set and the timing of anticipated regimes.